On my last birthday back in November 2011 I was bought an array or Lush products by my good friend David and amongst the smells and bright colours were something I had not come across before, shampoo bars.

The majority of liquid shampoos available on the market are mostly made up of water, surfactants and other chemicals, fragrance, preservatives and plastic bottle and a lid. The obvious reason why traditional shampoo needs to come bottled in plastic in because it is liquid!Because Lush shampoo bars contain no water, they are highly concentrated. You can get between well over a hundred hair washes out of one bar, thus making it the equivalent of about three liquid shampoo bottles and at a fraction of the cost at approximately £5 a bar. So, when you buy a shampoo bar, you're preventing about 75 grams of plastic from being introduced into the environment. Since Lush sell nearly 1,800,000 bars all over the world, they are collectively save around 135 tonnes of plastic every year!I hate to admit to my slight OCD but what I find refreshing with Lush shops are the neat and yet nakedness of the shop, its bars and blocks neatly stacked and all cosmetics and washes readily available to try, reminds me that if Apple were to sell cosmetics and soap then this would be the way they would do it.